Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

for a big sister.”
    don’t know what Fletcher wanted me to do. Now I’ll Finn was silent a moment. Then he raised his head and never know.”
    stared at me with his bright green eyes—eyes that were so
    “You’ll figure it out,” Finn said. “And I’ll help you.”
    similar to Fletcher’s it made my heart crack. “You might Spoken like a true brother, blood or not. I smiled at not have been his biological daughter, but Dad loved you him. “I know you will—”
    just as much as he did me. You said it yourself. He loved Click-click . Click-click .
    knowing other people’s secrets. He probably started digFinn’s laptop spit out a different sort of noise, as though ging at first just to see who you really were and whether the hard drive had caught and snagged on something. I or not he could trust you.”
    raised my brows. Finn leaned forward and hit a button.
    “And then?”
    Numbers popped up on his laptop monitor, along with Finn shrugged. “And then you became his daughter, what looked like a driver’s license photo. Frizzy blond his protégé, and he loved you. Maybe Dad wanted to find hair. Dark eyes. Dusky skin. Black glasses. the Fire elemental for you. Maybe he realized Bria hadn’t “Got her,” Finn said. “Violet Elizabeth Fox. Credit died that night. Maybe he wanted to make up for everycard records, bank accounts, school transcripts. Read all thing that had been done to you and your family.”
    about her.”
    I’d wondered those same things myself. Because that’s I joined him on the sofa and read the information on exactly the kind of man Fletcher Lane had been. Live and the screen. Violet Elizabeth Fox, age nineteen, parents let live, had been his motto. After all, assassins didn’t have deceased. A straight-A student on a full scholarship, geta lot of moral high ground to stand on and cast stones ting her business degree at Ashland Community College. and aspersions down at others. But if you fucked with A couple hundred bucks’ worth of charges on her credit somebody Fletcher Lane cared about, you might as well card, a couple thousand in a savings account. A small cut out your own heart with a rusty spoon—before he check deposited every two weeks into her checking acdid it for you. The old man had taught me to be the same count from some business called Country Daze. Probably way. Loyalty, love, whatever you wanted to call it, it was a part-time job of some sort. Nothing out of the ordinary the only thing as important as survival—and the only and nothing to suggest why she’d come into the Pork Pit thing truly worth dying for. Which is why I’d hunted looking for the Tin Man.
    down Alexis James, the Air elemental bitch who’d killed
    “Violet Fox commutes to school,” I said.
    Fletcher and had Finn tortured, even though I’d almost
    “How do you know that?” Finn asked.
    died in the process.
    I tapped the screen with my fingernail. “Because she’s Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 82-83
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    got an ACC parking permit and assigned slip. And look I pointed to a clock on the wall. “It’s not even four at her home address.”
    thirty yet. The bookstore is inside the student center, and
    “Ridgeline Hollow Road?” Finn asked. “That’s up in the building doesn’t close until six. Violet will probably the mountains.”
    stay put until then. ”
    “In the coalfields,” I added.
    “You’re the expert when it comes to the college,” Finn Folks had been carving coal out of the Appalachian said. “Seeing as how you spend so much of your free time Mountains for decades, and rich seams of it ran through there reading books by dead white guys and getting busy the mountains just north of Ashland. Coal mining was with the young studs in your classes.”
    dangerous, dirty, hard work, not for the claustrophobic
    “That’s right,” I said. “And your jealousy is unbecomor faint of heart. But it paid well enough for generations ing. Now, get your lazy ass off the sofa. It’s time for you of men and women to risk life and limb digging the fossil to show me just how fast that Aston Martin of yours fuel out of the ground. For some, mining was the only job can go.”
    the members of their family had ever known. For others, the mines were the final resting places of their fathers,
    “This is pointless,” Finn said. “She’s not coming back mothers, brothers, sisters. Dark, silent tombs no machinhere tonight.”
    ery and no